The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engaging in torture in its efforts to root out political corruption, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] report [text, PDF] released Tuesday. The report claims that President Xi Jinping’s [BBC profile] “war on corruption” has resulted in the punishment of thousands of low-level corrupt officials, as well as hundreds of so-called “tigers,” high level officials deemed corrupt by the CCP. HRW specifically alleges that officials are summoned by the CCP to detention centers operated outside of the criminal justice system. Officials are reportedly held for up to several months and tortured until they confess to corruption. Many are then handed over to face criminal prosecutions based on these confessions. HRW called for abolition of this system, which the organization said [press release] “underscores the abuses inherent in President Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.”

The CCP’s response to corruption in China has drawn international scrutiny for years. The CCP announced [JURIST report] in October that it had punished more than one million government officials for corruption. Earlier in October a former Chinese energy official was given a suspended death sentence [JURIST report] for stealing 200 million yuan (USD $29.99 million). And also that month Chinese officials announced that 70-year-old former legislator Bai Enpei had been sentenced to death [JURIST report] for his part in taking bribes.

THIS DAY @ LAW

International Day for the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination

March 21 is the International
Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination [UNESCO
factsheet].On March 21, 1804, the
Code Civil des Francais, the reformed French
civil law often referred to in French as the Code Napoleon, and in
English as the Napoleonic Code, went into effect in France, Belgium,
Luxembourg, and French colonies.

March from Selma begins

On March 21, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. began
his third march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to protest racial
discrimination in the Jim Crow South. By March 25, over 25,000
people lead by Dr. King reached Montgomery, Alabama. Specifically,
the march called attention to suppression of African-American voting
rights and a police assault on a civil rights demonstration three
weeks prior.Five months
later, in August 1965, Congress passed the Voting
Rights Act. Read a history
of the march from Selma to Montgomery and a history
of the Voting Rights Act.